A lesson being learned

A couple of weeks ago we had an adult male soldier brought to us in the middle of the night experiencing multiple seizures. I started an IV on him and was able to get his seizures to stop with medication. Like many of the soldiers in the area he drinks a lot of alcohol/homemade wine and we were not sure how much of his sickness was related to alcohol and how much was an acute illness brought on by cerebral malaria or some other disease.

The following morning he still had an altered mental status and was unable to verbalize when we asked him questions. In his confused and partially conscious state he had soiled his shorts and so I put on gloves and began cleaning him up. (By this time some fellow soldiers arrived and told us that they didn't know much about him except that he drank all the time.) At one point when I was cleaning the stool out of his shorts I began to feel resentful of the need to clean up after a grown man because of poor choices he made. As soon as the resentful thought came to me God filled me with compassion for the man and tears filled my eyes. I had a spirit initiated attitude change and began thinking about how Jesus would have cleaned his shorts and sat with him--or healed him and taught him about Himself.

As I continued caring for the man, I served God and him with a change of heart. It took conviction for me to serve with humility and compassion; I'm so grateful for the work of the Holy Spirit in my life that day. I need the work of the Spirit daily.

"Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You My flesh and my heart fail; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Psalm 73;25-26